


the birds in the bell tower

by Thealmostrhetoricalquestion



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Developing Friendships, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Mistaken Identity, Past Child Abuse, Spirit Shenanigans
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-16
Updated: 2020-12-16
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:20:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,539
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28114548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thealmostrhetoricalquestion/pseuds/Thealmostrhetoricalquestion
Summary: Zuko is supposed to be finding the Avatar. Everything depends on it. But a few weeks into his banishment, he finds himself trapped in a tower with an excitable spirit-bird, a myriad of issues, and a livid, raw scar that hasn't yet settled into the past where it belongs.Something pecks him again. Zuko opens his eyes and finds a blurry bird looking at him, head cocked. It isn’t the same fat bird as before.Zuko groans to himself. “How many of you are there?”This bird is small, about the size of Zuko’s hand. Its plumage is sandy and bright, but there is a darker patch on the top of its head that looks almost like a large arrow, pointing down to its beak.
Relationships: Aang & Zuko (Avatar), Iroh & Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 15
Kudos: 55





	the birds in the bell tower

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! This takes place sort of pre-series, during the very first part of Zuko's banishment. I wanted him to find Aang early and see how that would effect their relationship later on, but then this took over, and now I have birds. So many birds. I hope you enjoy it! I will add more tags later on. Rated T for the past child abuse, though I tried not to be too graphic, and for swears in later chapters.

When Zuko is young and beautifully foolish, his father burns his face. 

Some might have called him brave instead of foolish, had there been a single brave soul present at the time. But there wasn’t, and the news of what transpired is quickly stifled. It never passes the shipyards, it never leaves the mouths of anyone outside the Fire Lord’s territory. The rumour of the Prince’s burn and banishment turns to ash and vanishes with the next rainfall. There is nobody besides Agni himself who knows enough to call him brave, and Agni is rarely in a particularly talkative mood. 

Healers try to fix it, but the burn is persistent. The skin around Zuko’s left eye turns livid. It feels raw and cracks in the heat. The burn slithers behind his ear and lives there like a snake, a hateful, hissing reminder. 

When he wakes the first time, the Fire Lord is standing over him. He tells Zuko that he has a special job for him, and that he can only come home when it is complete. His face is set in a sneer. The cold look in his eye does nothing to soothe the blisters on his son’s skin. 

Zuko falls unconscious before the Fire Lord can tell him how to come home. When he wakes the second time, it is to the swell of the sea and his Uncle’s guilty, watchful pose. The boards above are damp with sea-salt and the herbal paste smeared on his face is cloying. 

Wooden boats are a rarity in the Fire Kingdom, but the Fire Lord does not particularly care if this crew goes up in smoke and ash, so he makes an exception. 

“Where are we going?” Zuko asks, his voice cracked with pain. “My father… he wouldn’t… he said I had to do something for him. Something special, to … to make the banishment go away. To regain my honour. He wouldn’t… ”

Uncle lays a hand over Zuko’s, enclosing his trembling fingers in a tight, warm grip. 

“I have to get up,” Zuko insists, but sleep is already stealing his words, a thief cloaked in black. 

“You have to rest,” Uncle says, sounding tired and old and so terribly, terribly sorry. “There is a long road ahead of you, Prince Zuko. You will need all the rest you can get.”

* * *

The news does not reach the men at the nearest port. Uncle uses his soft unassuming voice that houses iron and his tentative social power to lay claim to a warship made of steel, capable of withstanding a hundred thousand licks of flame, and then they set sail. 

Zuko gets strong quickly, but his spirit suffers. He goes to bed each night trembling and gasping, worn out and worn thin, but by daylight he stands strong on the deck. He barks orders. He skirts the ship like a hunted volewolf in those first few days, a wild look in his eye. The crew bow respectfully when he draws near, and they do not protest how he talks to them.

“Where are we going?” Zuko demands again, each time he finds a spare minute with Uncle. 

The answer is always the same: “To find a place where we can rest easy for a while.”

Uncle still won’t tell him what the job is. He won’t tell Zuko how to rid himself of his banished status, how to go home. It hurts. But more than that, it makes Zuko angry. He hasn’t got the room inside him for trivial hurts, and so he pushes this one inside and focuses on the white-hot, seething rage instead. If he had only stayed awake, if he hadn’t been so useless and weak that he fell unconscious before the Fire Lord could speak to him, he might be on his way home by now. 

It isn’t until the second week on the open sea, when Zuko sneaks on silent feet down to the cargo room, that he learns the truth. 

“It is an impossible quest,” Uncle Iroh tells the Healer wearily. “My brother has given him a job that cannot be done, in the hopes that he will waste away trying to fulfill it. I have no doubt that he expects Prince Zuko to fail.”

“What else is there to do?” the Healer agrees, his voice hushed. “Capturing the Avatar is … well, failure is the only option, surely.”

“But I dare not tell him that,” Uncle says. “Prince Zuko is strong. Much stronger than he knows, but he is still a child who looks up to his father. It may break his spirit.”

Their soft voices echo off the steel beams, carrying a sorrow that only most ghosts know. Zuko feels frozen. He stands shivering beside a stack of crates, his hunt for fruit forgotten. Uncle speaks for a little while more before the ghosts retreat. The footsteps fall away, and Zuko is left alone in the dark. 

For the first time since fire consumed him, Zuko opens his palm and lets the smallest flame flicker to life. It snatches the breath from his body. He expects to feel a thimble of fear. He expects the thimble to tip over and reveal a hidden waterfall of terror. But there isn’t any. He stares at his own fire, the warmth that shakes and quivers, and feels something set itself in his body. Like a broken bone coming into place. 

“Uncle doesn’t know anything,” Zuko mutters to himself. 

His spirit may be small and guttering, like the flame in his palm, but it is still there. It will not break.

* * *

Not everywhere has been conquered by the Fire Nation. 

The world is fragmented. Some of those fragments have been left untouched, hidden in the wildest, unreachable parts of the world. There are swamps and caverns and tiny villages that do not know the way that smoke can clog a throat. But they are only unreachable because the Fire Nation comes in droves, in small armies of soldiers dressed for war, weilding fire and weaponry. These armies have no interest in uninhabited lands, not yet. They have no interest in smaller areas, where the armies simply don't fit. 

But there is room enough in those fragments for a banished Prince and his weary crew. 

Zuko leads the charge. He reminds Uncle that he is still a Prince, and that this is his ship, and he will be steering them from now on. Uncle does not try to argue. He sips his tea in infuriating silence and does a lot of humming. Zuko stews in his rage and lets him be. 

He never mentions that he knows. He does not tell Uncle that he was lurking in the shadows, listening to his conversation. If Uncle knows, it’s because he spends too long watching Zuko instead of doing something useful. 

The ship docks next in a plain, tiny Earth Kingdom village, and Zuko storms off to scout out the area while the crew stocks up the ship. The spicy jerky is disappearing strangely swiftly, they say, with slight frowns. Zuko hides his burning cheeks and disappears into the village. 

There is nothing around but huts and simple people. They shrink away from him, eyeing the livid colours on his robes and his face. Some mutter curses and straighten their backs when he glares, but for the most part, they give him a wide berth. 

His scar feels like a target. Zuko curls his itching fingers into fists, refusing to touch the raw, puckered skin around his eye. His vision is thankfully still intact, although it blurs at times, and the eye strains much easier than the other. He finds his gaze darting here and there, seeking out something useful. 

It is hard to gather information when nobody will draw near him, and for a minute Zuko considers ordering his crew to do it for him, but he isn’t supposed to know about the Avatar. He isn’t supposed to know how to get home. 

“There are spirits acting unwisely in the falls,” is what one young woman divulges to him, her thin frame trembling. 

Zuko has never wanted to be someone that people feared. His father called that a weakness, one that would have to be trained out of him, but he wasn’t like Azula. He didn't have the strength in him to make people afraid of him. He wasn’t strong enough to _want_ that whole-heartedly, the way father and his sister seem to want it. 

Now, though, he isn’t sure what’s more prominent: that unease or his own anger. It blurs the lines. 

“What kind of spirits?” Zuko demands. “What’s happening in these falls?”

The woman bows her head and can say no more, so Zuko storms away. He feels eyes on him, dark and unfriendly. But nobody makes a move. He still bears the Fire Nation’s sigil, and his uniform is the typical deep red and black, edged with strips of gold. The colours of conquerors. 

“Prince Zuko, you quite outran me,” says Uncle, with a jovial smile. He stands at the top of the ship and bows his head slightly when Zuko draws near. “Care to tell an old man what captured your undivided attention?”

“I want to make a stop, before we get too far from this place.”

Uncle’s brows raise. “Oh?”

Zuko hesitates, but there’s a way around this, he knows there is. He just has to be clever. He has to frame it in a way that Uncle will understand. Uncle—for all that he is a dragon and a warrior and a man made of phoenix feather—is unfailingly kind. 

“There was a woman.” Zuko turns his head away. “She said they were having trouble with spirits nearby. In a place called the falls. We should go there, and see what we can do to help, if we can.”

“Ah,” says Uncle, and then he says nothing more, but the ship turns dutifully West.

* * *

The ship steers easily into a small cove, where it docks near a crumbling pier made of white stone. The land here is thick with forest, the trees tall enough that they obscure everything but the very tip of a white stone tower in the distance. 

“You think the spirit is in the tower?” Zuko asks, climbing off the ship and brushing his tunic off on the dock. “The woman mentioned falls, so I assume we’ll find some water here.”

His voice cracks embarrassingly on the first syllable of water. He grits his teeth, but the crew remains deadly silent, nobody daring to laugh. 

Zuko does not pack much of a punch at the tender age of thirteen, but he isn’t without his threats. His name doesn’t carry much meaning in higher circles anymore, if it ever did, but he still throws it around like it weighs so much more than the cost of his betrayal. 

The crew of the exiled ship never laugh at Zuko. They might snicker at his paltry attempts at appearing threatening, but only to themselves. They are careful not to openly pity him, but pity him they do. Some, like the cook and the Healer and a few of their best fishermen, actually care for the boy. They just keep it to themselves. 

Perhaps they shouldn’t have. Perhaps, if they had been a little more open with their growing affection, Zuko wouldn’t assume the worst when the ship pulls away, leaving only a large crate on the docks and a small rowing boat. 

But he doesn’t see it at first. He doesn’t see the ship and the crew retreat across the sea. He leads the charge, instead, with Uncle following at his heels, and doesn’t bother to look back at the dock. He sees the water pooling at the bottom of a vast fall in the near-distance, and he marches towards it through thickets and bracken wrung with white flowers. There is a heady scent in the air. 

“Why, I do believe these are moonflowers,” Uncle laughs, bending to sniff the pearlescent petals. “Mmm. Such exquisite scents from such an elusive flower. They only bloom in places where Spirit magic is high and active.”

Zuko is still young and beautifully foolish. He knows nothing of old towers made of moonstone, and he knows even less of moonflowers and the waters they reside near. His Uncle is far older and less foolish, but there are still things he doesn’t know.

But he still fills a leather flask with water from the spring, and gives it to Zuko. 

Zuko drinks his first sip as they round the very edge of the pool. The tower stands oppressively tall at the top of a bank of grass, surrounded by fields of more white flowers. Cliffs tower to the left, blocking out the rest of the world. To the right are more trees lining the horizon, gently obscuring the swell of the open sea. The flowers curl up when they walk through them; Zuko stomps, leaving great tracks in his path, and Uncle sighs, but doesn’t protest. 

It isn’t until they reach the tower that Zuko starts to feel that first pull in his stomach. He takes a few more sips of water, mistaking it for thirst, and when it only increases, he gulps it all down while Uncle watches sadly. 

“There’s nothing here!” Zuko snaps, throwing the flask on the ground. “There are no spirits, and there’s nothing weird acting up, and the Avatar—”

He cuts himself off, but it’s too late. Uncle’s expression breaks open, sorrow pooling in his eyes. 

“So you have discovered the truth,” Uncle says, sighing deeply. “I had hoped to keep it from you a while longer, but I see that it was a misguided notion. You deserve to know the truth, Prince Zuko.”

Uncle explains, even though Zuko already knows, that to end his banishment, he has to find the Avatar and bring him home. It is a hopeless quest, says Uncle, but he doesn’t know Zuko well at all. 

“I won’t rest until I find the Avatar, Uncle,” Zuko warns him. “It isn’t hopeless, and I am going home. I will restore my honour and make sure that father … I want him to forgive me, Uncle. I need him to forgive me.”

“It is not you that should be begging for forgiveness.”

“I won’t beg. I’ll earn it. I won’t rest until I’ve earned it.”

Uncle’s gaze darkens, and then softens just as quickly. “I was afraid you would say that. Prince Zuko, it is now I who must beg your forgiveness.”

Zuko looks at him sharply, confused. “What for?”

Softly, Uncle says, “Look at where you are standing.”

Without noticing, he has moved from the thick grass and gentle unfurling petals to the smooth, stone entryway of the tower. He looks at his feet, puzzled. The doors to the tower are wide open, though he doesn’t remember opening them. Behind him is a long, curling staircase, leading up to the bell at the top of the tower. Nothing in him had noticed his movements. But something in him had _prompted_ his movements. 

“The water,” Zuko says, numb with a growing sense of horror. “There was something in the water. I felt it… Uncle, what did you do?”

Uncle’s next inhale is shallow, and his eyes fill with tears. “It is an old, ancient power,” he says. “Towers of Moonstone will hold captive anyone who drinks from the nearby waters. You would have to speak with the Moon Spirit herself to understand why or how, but from what I have found, anyone who drinks water from the falls nearby will have no choice but to remain trapped in this tower for as many moons as they are old.”

“Thirteen months,” Zuko says. “You think… you… I’m trapped here? Uncle, why?”

“Because I plan to challenge the Fire Lord, and to make him right his wrongs.” 

The world seems to grow still. Even thinking the words is an offense. Zuko stares at Uncle, his heart thudding desperately in his chest, and lets Uncle’s fiery determination settle for a moment. The look in his eyes is unnerving. 

“I cannot keep you safe if I am deep in the Fire Kingdom,” Uncle continues.

“Uncle…”

“I will not have you waste away on a ship, searching for something that cannot be found.” Uncle is firm, but his eyes are so sad and wet with weakness. “My nephew, I cannot bear to see you so distraught. With time, wounds will heal, and you will find yourself in good spirits, I am sure. But until then, until I have found a way to return you to your home, you will stay here.”

“No,” Zuko says, falling to his knees. “No, I won’t. I won’t stay here.”

“Zuko,” Uncle urges, kneeling in a flurry of grey robes. “Please, listen to me. There are far more dangerous things lurking in the seas than there are in this tower. My brother—your _father—_ has sent men into the waters to hunt you down. He cares not for things which he should care for with his whole heart.”

Zuko shakes his head, unwilling to listen, but Uncle’s voice is relentlessly steady, giving him no option. 

“I have sworn the crew to secrecy, and those that disagreed were disposed of at the last stop. Nobody will find you here. Zuko, nephew, please know that I would stay here with you. But I cannot fight the Fire Lord on his decisions from the sea, or from such a remote place, and I cannot allow you to endanger yourself, travelling alone.”

Zuko surges forward, bashing his clenched fists against the open air between the door and the outside wall. But it feels like he’s hitting stone, and he curls up quickly enough, hiding his fists in his armpits. There’s some kind of barrier there, an invisible one, and it doesn’t let him take a single step forward. 

“Go,” Zuko growls. 

“It is not forever—Prince Zuko?” 

Zuko clambers to his feet, backing up inside the tower. He swipes his cheeks to get rid of the tears, banishing them as he was banished. Uncle Iroh climbs to his feet too, his expression pleading, but Zuko refuses to look him in the eye. 

“Go on, then. If you want to leave, then leave. Don't waste time trying to reassure me of something I know is untrue.”

Then he turns on his heel and runs. He runs up the tower, taking the crumbling stairs two at a time. Distantly, he hears Uncle calling for him in a grief-stricken tone, but he doesn’t stop. He doesn’t stop until he reaches the very top of the tower, where a trapdoor awaits, as does a small window. 

Zuko curls up on the floor between the two, his back facing the window. He listens as Uncle calls out his name, growing silent only when his throat is too hoarse to continue. He doesn’t move to check the window, but he feels it in his heart, in his flame, when the little rowing boat by the dock peels safely out into the open sea.

* * *

For the first day, Zuko lies in the dust and dirt. The water keeps him full, but the knowledge of what happened keeps him still and frozen. He has never really given up before. He doesn’t usually let himself stop trying. He curses Uncle in every tongue he knows, pulling swear words from the chest he keeps in the back of his mind, filled to the brim thanks to his time spent on the open seas. Sailors have strong tongues and weak morals. 

Azula would take one look at his sad, pathetic self, and laugh. 

It’s this, more than anything, that prods the trapdoor with a nearby stick until it opens. A rope falls down and curls in a heap at his feet. Zuko hauls himself up using the rope, and crawls to his feet inside a vast, round, domed room. Most of the room is taken up by a large bell made of dull brass, which hangs from the rafters, more rope looped over it’s rusted surface. There are green spots on the bell where it needs washing and polishing. 

Something flaps and hoots above him. Zuko springs away from the bell and stares up into the shadowed corners of the roof. 

“Who’s there?” he calls. 

A big, fat bird falls from the rafters and lands with a soft flump on the stone floor, stirring up dust. It looks like the mallow sweets that came rushing in during street fairs and fire festivals, ready to be toasted. They went well with green matcha and fireball candies. 

The bird gives Zuko a very unimpressed look, as though it can tell he’s comparing it to food, and fluffs up its tail. Its feathers are big and downy, speckled with streaks of grey. Zuko can’t get over the _size_ of it. 

“Alright,” Zuko says, stepping closer. “You’re no turtleduck, but you’re not bad, I guess. Do you live here?”

Azula would chase him if she could hear him talking to birds. She would mock him and fill the air with sparks. Zuko turns away with a scoff and crosses to the window. More birds rustle up above, in the rafters, squawking gently. He ignores them. 

He finds an old, wicker bed tipped over on the floor and tips it right-side up. It needs repairing; some of the slats have snapped, and the others are flimsy, worn thin. There are raggedy blankets full of holes strewn about the place, and trinket boxes full of unknown treasures, and almost everything is covered in dust. 

Zuko ignores it all. His breath is starting to come in pants the longer he thinks of Uncle and his swift retreat, and it stirs up heat in the pads of his fingertips. He sits hurriedly on the dusty floor, facing the sun, and looks for his flame. When he gathers it in his palm, he settles his breathing. The fat bird shuffles closer, hooting softly, before shimmying away when the fire flares ever so slightly. Then it shuffles even closer. 

The birds in the bell tower are brave, Zuko thinks. 

He ignores everything, focusing on his flame, and falls into a deep trance state.

* * *

He wakes, weak and hungry, and almost snaps his neck trying to climb out of the trapdoor, tumbling down the stem of rope. His breath is steady, and his flame is full, but the Spirit water has worn off and left behind a weak, trembling mess. The tower is tall and thin like a needle, poking the heavens. Zuko climbs down all one hundred and nineteen steps, and when he reaches the bottom, his legs give out. 

He wakes again when something pecks his cheek. It stings. His other cheek is pressed against the cold marble floor. He pushes himself up, but it does no good; his arms feel like liquid. 

Something pecks him again. Zuko opens his eyes and finds a blurry bird looking at him, head cocked. 

It isn’t the same fat bird as before. 

Zuko groans to himself. “How many of you are there?”

This bird is small, about the size of Zuko’s hand. Its plumage is sandy and bright, but there is a darker patch on the top of its head that looks almost like a large arrow, pointing down to its beak. 

The bird hops back, and waits for Zuko to sit up. 

Zuko is too tired to make it back up the tower, so he sits in a patch of sunlight let through by an empty window. The stone feels cool against his back. The bird doesn’t stray too close again, but rather flits out of the open window and back again, like it’s trying to tempt Zuko outside. 

“Believe me, I would go if I could.” Zuko puts his head back and closes his eyes. “But I can’t. I can’t go outside.”

But Zuko is young and beautifully foolish, and so is his Uncle, in the eyes of the Spirits. Neither of them know the truth of the Spirit waters, or towers made of moonstone. 

The bird keeps its head cocked for a moment longer, and then it flits out of the window and disappears. 

“Show off,” Zuko mutters. 

Eventually, Zuko gets up and stumbles about. He scans the floor of the tower, but there’s only one door and several small windows, all of which he can’t fit through. The main entrance still bars his exit. Zuko ends up sitting on the ground again, with aching fists and frustrated tears in his eyes. 

The door is still flung wide open, so he sees the exact moment that the tiny bird appears. Its feathers are a little ruffled, and it’s dragging a long flat leaf along the ground. Piled high on the leaf is a mound of little purple berries. 

Zuko stares in shock. Then he shuffles closer and picks up one of the berries, examining it closely. It doesn’t look poisonous. And by that, he means there’s no obvious skull or symbol stamped on the side of the berry. He worries for a minute, but unless he wants to eat the birds—which he really rather wouldn’t—he’s not got much of a choice. 

“I’m trusting you,” Zuko says hoarsely, popping the berry in his mouth. 

It tastes sweet, with a sour hint to it. He chews and swallows and waits for something to strike him down, but nothing does. It takes only a minute to swallow the rest of the berries, chewing until his tongue is purple and his stomach is full, with the tiny bird perched on the fragile crest of his ankle bone.

* * *

The fat bird and the little bird are friends. They follow Zuko all over the tower, until he stops flinching every time he hears a rustling sound. The little bird sits on the fat birds’ back, like a person riding a giant rhinoceros beetle. He can’t work out what kind of bird they are, and he’s never been particularly good at identifying anything that isn’t a turtleduck. 

He misses the turtleducks. It’s only been a few months, but already he longs for the quiet gardens and the tranquil pool, the silence broken only by soft quacking. He longs to run his fingers through the water, to hide from his instructors behind flat, wide leaves, to munch on stolen round cakes and give the crumbs to curious creatures. 

But he can’t. He shakes the thoughts away. He can’t go back until he captures the Avatar, and he can’t capture the Avatar until he escapes this tower. 

Zuko sets his shoulders in grim determination. 

The next few days are a flurry of failures. Zuko hates failure. It reminds him too much of his lessons as a child. It reminds him of burns and slaps and racing across the rooftops to get away from his tutors and his angry sister. It makes him stiff-backed and angry every time his escape plans fail. Zuko hates failure, but he is well-versed in it, and it never keeps him down for long. 

It doesn’t matter how much he tries to force the glass from the panes, they simply refuse to budge. It doesn’t matter how much fire he flings at the doorway, it will not yield. The windows without glass will not yield to his fists. He tries to climb the rafters every day, but the most he can do is stand on his tip-toes on an aged beam and stare through the ragged hole in the ceiling, almost tasting the sky. 

Every night, he falls into a deep, frustrated slumber. Every morning, the little bird stares at him with what looks like keen disappointment. 

Nothing changes until one evening, when Zuko falls backwards on the wicker bed, his eyes glittering with frustration. He spends a fair few minutes staring up at the ceiling, steadying his flame while the birds coo and whisper in the rafters. Then a pair of wings take flight, and the soft, fat bird swoops down and lands with aplomb on Zuko’s chest. 

Zuko blinks. The bird settles itself self-importantly. Above its wide, puffy white head, the much smaller bird makes an appearance. It peeks over the top of all the downy feathers and cocks its head. 

“Hi,” Zuko says warily. “I’m sure you’d be much comfier somewhere else.”

The bird seems to get heavier, if anything, like a little anchor on his chest. 

“Fine. But don't complain to me if I fall asleep and crush you in the night.”

There is something abominably embarrassing about the warmth Zuko feels from the first comfortable contact he’s had in months. Months of sailing the seas and pacing the length of his ship, only allowing the briefest of touches from Uncle and the occasional clinical prodding from a Healer. The bird is heavy and warm and soft, and it grounds Zuko to the wicker bed, worn through with holes. 

He leaves the blanket on the ground, and sleeps. 

Then he wakes again, disorientated. It isn’t morning. The light coming through the roof slats is all wrong, too pale and too high in the sky. Zuko glances up, instantly sharp-eyed, and finds a tiny beak inches from his cheek, ready to peck him again if he goes back to sleep. 

The small bird hoots softly, a triumphant little sound, and then flutters a little distance away. 

Something pulls Zuko from the bed. There’s nothing stopping him from rolling over and going back to sleep, but he swings his legs over the side of the bed anyway. The bird hoots, and takes a few eager steps backwards. 

“What?” Zuko’s voice is nothing more than a hoarse rasp. “What is it?”

Perhaps it’s a mistake to trust the bird. The last person that Zuko tentatively trusted was Uncle, and he trapped him in the tower and sailed away on a ship, never to return. But the bird brought him fruit when he was starving. As much as he wants to climb back into the broken bed, there is something about this moment that draws him forward. 

The bird leads him to the window. The same empty, glassless window that he beat his hands against the other day. Moonlight comes sweeping in through the gap, dusting the floor in grainy white light. Zuko comes to a stop in front of it and scowls. 

“I told you before, I can’t leave,” Zuko says. 

The bird hops up on the sill of the window and chirps impatiently. 

“After that trick with the berries, I thought you were clever.” Zuko rolls his eyes and sticks his hand out, waving it about in the window. “See? I can’t…”

His fingers pierce the barrier easily, as though there was never anything there in the first place. Cool night air kisses his fingertips. The bird gives a triumphant little hoot and flutters up to perch on Zuko’s outstretched wrist. 

It takes a matter of minutes for Zuko to reach the ground floor of the tower. He skids to a halt at the bottom of the steps and throws himself through the doorway, barely stopping to feel the transition from stone to grass beneath his feet, barely stopping to hear the bird flit to life behind him, chirping all the while, focusing only on the white-hot relief _burning_ through him. The wind rushes past him and the stars are bright above, and he runs through the fields like his life depends on it, like his legs will give out the moment he stops. 

And they do. He sinks to his knees at the edge of the first field, suddenly overcome. Tears fall steadily down his cheeks. He can’t stop them from flowing, but the only living creature around to see them is the bird, and Zuko has a feeling that it will keep the secret. 

Behind him, a trail of trampled flowers leads the way back to the tower. It glows in the moonlight, not the way that white stone glows under the sun’s glare, but the way the moon itself glows. 

“Towers of Moonstone,” Zuko murmurs thickly, wiping his eyes. “That’s what Uncle said.”

“You’ve been so tired after trying to escape every day that you went to sleep as soon as the sun went down!” 

Zuko stiffens at the sound of an unfamiliar, child-like voice. He whirls around as best he can in this position, planting one foot in the earth behind him while he reaches for a blade that isn’t there. 

A blueish, ghostly-looking boy beams at him from amongst the flowers, sitting exactly where the bird once sat. 

Zuko unfurls his fingers with a precise flourish, beckoning fire to burst along his skin. The flowers around him shrivel in the sudden heat, the earth blackening under his feet in a rough circle. The spirit-boy jerks back in surprise. 

“Woah!” The spirit-boy grins suddenly. “You’re a Firebender. Cool!”

“Who are you? Where did you come from?” Zuko lowers his hand warily, still on guard. “Are you the spirit from the falls?”

The spirit-boy stands up and brushes himself off, though nothing comes away from his robes. Everything about him is warm and colourful, even though the only shade Zuko can see is blue. He looks faintly translucent. When Zuko stands and has to angle his head down, it’s clear the boy is a year or two younger than him. Not by much, though. 

“Spirits from the falls?” the spirit-boy asks. 

At the spirit-boy’s curious look, Zuko reluctantly explains himself. 

“That’s why we came here. That’s why I came here. The village nearby reported mentions of high spirit activity in the falls, so we sailed here to find out what was going on. That’s you, right?”

“Ha, well…” The spirit-boy rubs the back of his neck, averting his eyes sheepishly. “I might have encouraged them to have some fun every now and again? Spirits are so stuffy. But I don't think we were _that_ noisy! You should come and see for yourself. Come on, they’d love to meet you!”

The spirit-boy vanishes in a mist of blue and white, stirring the flowers in the field. Zuko blinks after him. Then the boy rushes back into view with a grin. 

“Sorry! I’ll walk slower for you.”

“I can keep up,” Zuko protests. 

Still, he’s fairly grateful for the slow pace as they head down the hills. He keeps half an eye on the spirit-boy to make sure that he doesn’t do anything suspicious or strange; part of him insists that this is a trap, and that he needs to run, but the rest is not so sure. 

Everything Zuko knows about spirits, he learned from Uncle Iroh. He knows they can be kind and forgiving, and that they can be mischievous, and he knows that they can be dark and poisonous. Spirits are nothing like people, and they follow their own rules, knowing everything and nothing at once, but there is a humanity to them that cannot be ignored. 

“So the barrier that keeps me trapped in the tower still stands,” Zuko ventures, retracing the spirit-boy’s first words. “But it fades at night. Right?”

“I think so. At least, that’s how it works for me. I’m stuck as a bird by day, but when I leave the Tower at night, I turn back into me.”

So he _is_ the tiny bird from before. Zuko eyes him, unsure, but it seems strange to lie about such a thing. 

“But you can leave the barrier by day,” Zuko points out. “You left before. You fetched me food.”

A small war wages in his chest then. The war between prodding this stranger for more information, remaining aloof until he determines the risk of knowing this spirit, or thanking him, the way mother and Uncle would want. Zuko can pretend not to care for Uncle’s thoughts all he wants, but he knows it isn’t true. And his mother… 

“Thank you,” Zuko says, bowing stiffly. “I don't know how I would have survived if you hadn’t helped me.”

The spirit-boy smiles brightly. “No problem! I’m happy to help. You seemed kinda sad and I didn't want to see you get sick, and everything in these fields is safe to eat. I think there might even be crops growing further over that way.”

He points vaguely in a direction behind them, away from the sea and the falls. Zuko ponders this, following him through the grass, and doesn’t really register that his question goes unanswered.

* * *

“I call that one Lilypad, and this one Current, and you can’t see Vast because he’s so far down in the water, but he’s nice once you get to know him. Just don't let him sink you! You won’t come back up like us.”

Zuko keeps clear of the edge of the pool after that. 

“If you’re a spirit like them, why don't you know their real names?”

The spirit-boy looks briefly caught out, opening his mouth and closing it again, like a pigeonfrog chasing a fly. 

“They won’t talk to me,” the spirit-boy says eventually. “Not properly. I think I made them mad.”

“Mad?” 

The spirit boy pastes on a smile that looks far too bright to be believable. “You know, with all the splashing! I was just trying to cheer them up. There’s not much to do around here, so I was trying to make it more fun.”

It isn’t a lie, not by itself, but it also isn’t the right answer to the question. Zuko, young and beautifully foolish as he is, isn’t quite foolish enough to believe him in good faith. 

They settle at the edge of the falls. The spirit-boy talks enough for an entire ship’s crew, and Zuko barely has to engage. He keeps himself as stiff and proper as he might have in Grandfather’s company, and listens to the spirit-boy ramble on, pointing out flowers and insects and catapulting himself high into the sky on an ethereal blue breeze. 

“You should tell me your name!” the spirit-boy exclaims, bounding closer. “We can be friends, can’t we?”

Zuko stares at him. “We’ve only known each other for a little while.”

“That’s how friendship’s start!”

Zuko gets to his feet, suddenly annoyed. He doesn’t need friends. He doesn’t need help or assistance or a smiling young spirit. What he needs is for Uncle to see sense and come sailing back to him. The spirit-boy’s light and the shine from the Moonstone Tower makes it seem almost like daylight, but that isn’t the truth. The truth is, he’s stuck. He’s stuck on an island hidden away from sight, and he can only walk on the grass at night. 

“What happens when the sun comes up?”

The spirit-boy winces, rubbing the back of his head. “I don't really know. You just snap back into place in the Tower. Why?”

“My name is Zuko,” he says, standing taller. “But I don't need friends. What I need is to find a way off this island, so that I can begin my search for the Avatar. I won’t have you getting in the way of that.”

When Zuko leaves the falls behind, the spirit-boy doesn’t follow him.

**Author's Note:**

> I have an endless love for anything that depicts Iroh in a slightly fiercer light, while still showcasing his softness. It hurt me to write him leaving! But it doesn't end here, I promise. 
> 
> Thank you so much for reading! I hope you enjoyed it! <3


End file.
